“Depends. The mind can do funny things. Have you talked to the doctor about it?”
“Oh, yes, many times. She gives me pills or portions, but they do no real good. She says that the dreams are a textbook set, for all the time I am whole and running free in the primeval woods. They are not bad dreams, just strange ones, but every time I go to sleep and have another I feel there is a wrongness to it, that the nightmare it is just around the corner. I am a bit frightened by it.”
He looked seriously at her. “Well, you’ve been through a lot lately. Still, I’m not sure this place is good for you. You should go to some south seas island, or at least Montreal, and just get away from anything having to do with Magellan or this place for a while.”
She shook her head slowly from side to side. “I—I can not. What I fear here is nothing compared to that which I fear beyond here. I could not go out there, into the real world, without some sort of anchor, and the only anchor I have, the only friend, is right here with me.”
He just stared at her for a moment, not really comprehending.
“Greg—you will pardon me, but I really don’t know how this is done—will you… kiss me? Even if you don’t mean it and don’t really want to? Just for me?”
Pity welled up in him, along with other feelings he didn’t quite understand, but he knew what he had to do. He leaned over her and said, softly, “I’ll give you the kiss of your life.”
He had always been a very good kisser, and he had to repress the urge to do more, but the awkward angle he was forced by the chair’s presence to take was a constant reminder that she could feel no where else.
He broke it off when his back and arm couldn’t stand the strain of supporting him any longer, and he saw that she was crying.
For himself, he had very mixed emotions about the episode, but he was certainly uncomfortable. Although he’d known that she had a crush of sorts on him, up to now it had been a purely non-physical thing, and, therefore, somewhat abstract. Now, he knew, it could get more than a little awkward for all concerned, and he had enough on his mind as it was. When a cop got emotionally involved in a case, even unwillingly, he lost his objectivity and was more prone to take risks and make mistakes. This was a game in which risks and mistakes were what he couldn’t afford. The other side held most of the cards, and he had no large force or laws to back him up.
For Angelique, it was the fulfillment of a fantasy. Still very much an adolescent emotionally and desperately in need of a close companion, the father figure of the psychiatric report, she had seized upon MacDonald from the start. What was strangest and most wonderful during the kiss, though, was that she was sure she felt various other parts of her body tingle and glow as well. She wanted to shout out that she loved him, wanted him, would do anything for him, but she was afraid that she might drive him away. She had nothing really to offer him except money, and he had never shown much liking for it in large amounts. His file had said he’d been a lifelong member of the socialist New Democratic Party back in B.C.
And, of course, that was one of his attractions, at least in reassurance terms. She knew full well she’d never lack for suitors, but he was the only one that she could count on from the start not to be thinking first of the dollar signs.
So she said, “Thank you, Greg. It meant a great deal to me.”
“No, no! Any time you like! It’s in my job description. Kiss any and all beautiful women who ask me.”
She chuckled. “And am I beautiful?”
“You bet you are,” he answered playfully. “But now I think we ought to get you home.”
“Red can run me up with the dusk patrol.”
“Oh, no. I’ll run you home. We can always get a cart— they’re moving stuff up from the ship all evening. Uh—by the way, are you going to tell me about how you got all scratched up or not?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“You’ve got little scratches on your arms, ankles, and even one up there just on the side of your face. I noticed them as soon as we met but I figured you’d tell me about them.”
She shook her head in puzzlement. “I—I did not even know of them.” She looked down at her arms, held on the arms of the chair by small, loose straps. “I can not see. Undo one and hold it up.”
He unbuckled a strap and did so, turning the arm slightly and carefully so he wouldn’t hurt anything. The scratches were there—thin, random, and small, but deep enough and old enough to have formed scabs.
“Bruises I am used to—you get them all the time like this and never really know. But these—these look deep enough that I should have at least known when they happened. You say they are also on my neck?”
“Yes—there, on the left side.”
“Funny. I have had an itch there off and on today, but I did not pay much attention to it. I shall have Sister Maria take a look at them when I get back.”
“I think you should.” He didn’t know why they disturbed him—they certainly weren’t anything serious—but their mere existence troubled him. If he’d blocked it out before, he now had no doubts that he was the principal reason that she remained on the island. He resolved that if any of his strong suspicions and hunches could be independently confirmed he’d get her off this place, even if he had to physically carry her.
And then, one night, another came to the meadow, one not like them, yet not like the Others, either. Dark he was, darker than the darkest night, yet even as he sat there upon the glassy rock no features could be determined. It was not a man, but the shadow of a man, yet it moved, and had depth and a form that was like something solid and real.
And they feared him, far more than they feared the Others, for he radiated power and fear and his confidence was absolute, yet such was that power, so hypnotic, so magnetic, that they were held, transfixed, and could not flee.
And he played for them tunes on a pipe, and the naked girl-apes danced for him and around him, a wild, frenzied dance that aroused in them all their most primal emotions, and gave within them a sense of power that overwhelmed their fear and intensified that hunger they had felt but never understood or filled.
And when their dancing had reached a fever pitch, he stopped and pointed, and they were off, no longer playful things but a wild, frenzied pack seeking a release they did not understand. They came to a road and waited, hidden in the trees and bushes, their eyes glazed, mouths foaming, waiting, waiting…
And, soon, there came footsteps along the road, and they saw that it was one of the Others, a small man with a balding head and slight goatee, dressed casually in shirt and shorts and sandals. He walked very confidently and seemed unaware that they were there.
As one they leaped out and were upon him in seconds, and he was pushed to the ground and his throat was slashed by nailed hands and biting teeth. He was dead very quickly, but they did not stop, his blood flowing warm and inviting, and they tore at the corpse and drank the blood and ate of the flesh and it filled their insane hunger.
There was a thunderclap which startled them, and then it began to rain quite heavily, drenching them all. From down the road they could hear the sound of one of the Whining Monsters, and they broke off and dragged the corpse with them, back into the woods, back along the trail in the now-driving rain, back to the meadow where the Dark Man waited.
Lightning flashed as they reached the meadow, illuminating the scene briefly as if it were day, yet the Dark Man remained the darkest black of shadows. He stood there, laughing, and gestured, and they placed the corpse on the stone, and they howled their joy and triumph over the Others and danced again around the stone with its grisly burden, danced in the mud and the lightning and the rain…